I just came across this Guardian article and I’m suddenly very concerned indeed. With more and more local authorities increasingly strapped for cash, it appears the so-called ‘warehousing’ of disabled people is starting to make an ugly reappearance. That is, rather than being supported to live in our own homes independently with the help of Personal Assistants, we’re increasingly being sent back to live in institutions or care homes like we were thirty or forty years ago. Frankly, I find that absolutely chilling.

Luckily I have been relatively independent all my life: I grew up as part of a loving, supportive family. Going to university gave me my first real taste of living on my own, choosing what to eat and when, and what I wanted to do. Then, when I moved in with Lyn here in London fourteen years ago, it became impossible for me to imagine a life without absolute agency: surely I have the rights and liberties of any other person. However, I have heard what life is like in such institutions for disabled people, without such liberties: being told when to get up and when to go to bed; having no choice over what you eat; not being allowed to leave the institution without permission or without a ‘carer’ with you. I think Lyn herself lived in such a prison for a time before I met her. She told me how she was perpetually treated like an infant.

To be honest I think I would rather die than be institutionalised like that, I value the freedoms I have so much. Yet because of the cuts the government is now inflicting on local authorities, it is becoming a very real prospect for many disabled people; people who are now used to living on their own and are perfectly capable of doing so. As the Guardian article notes, many people are now trying to find ways to resist being warehoused, but as government money gets tighter and tighter, I fear it will be an uphill struggle. More and more people with less and less severe disabilities are probably going to be ‘encouraged’ to relinquish their independence. I know that social services are unlikely to set their sights on me in my flat, at least for a while; but as a disabled man I nonetheless find that a very worrying, troubling prospect.